Striped Bass Slot

[Gerry Zagorski]

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

Just curious
How many bass you hearing being caught from cape may to shark river ?

Oceanside bass fishing sucks except a few days a season now
Very hit or miss both spring and fall .
Used to have three solid months in the spring and two more in the fall .

Another month as the Hudson fish move east Thry normally merge with the Chesapeake fish . The next five months without Chesapeake fish adding to the mix all the pressure from Long Island to Maine would be in the Hudson fish .

It’s not just about great fishing now . It’s to keep it
Without the Chesapeake fish rebuilding it won’t take long to hurt our fishery here .
If anything the states east of us saw the issue as it was those states asking for the size limit change .

Seems to me not much has changed in the Ocean Fishery, you get shots here and there in the early spring and it turns on in the late spring if the migrating fish stay inshore.

I hear your point about the overall fishery now and what could happen if the Chesapeake stocks continue to decline. It is however at it's root a Chesapeake issue so how about dealing with those issues like Omega and farm run off?

As far as the states to our east, they want their share and I would have voted the same in their shoes. This is why I think states, within reason, should have some sort of latitude in their local waters to do what makes sense for them. I also think we have and continue to tightened our belts in NJ over the years. We have a lot more conservation minded people that have taken the lead in measures needed to manage the resource.

What do we get in return? A booming local fishery with more restrictive access and no say at all on what happens in our local waters. That really rubs me the wrong way.